17 May 2012

Bamboo scaffolding green wall

It’s amazing what a little ingenuity and tenacity to do something good for the community and the environment can do. As it was published in an inspiring story featured in Inhabitat, Norway-based MMW Architects came up with a low-impact, inexpensive and easy-to-construct green wall system using bamboo scaffolding. As the article reads, “Although bamboo is not a common material for Norway, it is quite versatile, very rigid, resistant to rot and completely reusable for future installations.” The installation, which they called Skien’s MerSmak-Festival, was erected on an existing concrete wall in the backyard of the Lundetangen Pub in Norway to provide easily accessible fruits, vegetables and herbs.

With only plastic clips to connect them, the bamboo poles arranged in a lattice design proved plenty strong enough to support the weight of an entire vertical garden containing diverse herbs and fruits, including heavy bags of soil. The continually growing vertical garden will eventually cover every nook and cranny of the bamboo scaffold to become a wall of luscious, healthy green hues. So not only does this living wall provide fresh humulus, parthenocissus, herbs and strawberries to the pub, but it also provides beautiful piece of nature in what would otherwise be a cold, concrete jungle. Hence, this story serves as yet another shining example of the wonderful possibilities that exist through the application of durable, versatile and sustainable bamboo.

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An ecological future, one that is resilient, resource-abundant and conducive to life, lies in the knowledge banks of nature’s elegant solutions taken from 3.8 billion years of a research and development period (R&D).
In this elective course we explore nature's solutions to the challenges we grapple with as architects and designers. WELCOME!